


hit 'em right between the eyes

by nonbinarywithaknife (littleboxes)



Series: just let them REST alex [11]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Daggers, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Mentions of violence/character death but it's pretty vague, Referenced canonical character death, Sad with a Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:48:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22846648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleboxes/pseuds/nonbinarywithaknife
Summary: hamid multiclasses into a rogue.
Relationships: Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan & Azu, Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan & Celiquillithon "Cel" Sidebottom, Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan & Sasha Racket, Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan & Zolf Smith
Series: just let them REST alex [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1514891
Comments: 23
Kudos: 84





	hit 'em right between the eyes

**Author's Note:**

> title is from the offspring's "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" which is a very hamid song
> 
> anyway this was all spawned from @stormstressed's meta (https://stormstressed.tumblr.com/post/190924704192/on-a-meta-level-obviously-hamid-taking-the) about hamid that got me fucked up about possible rogue-sorcerer!hamid and then it all spiraled from there

hamid feels the realization crest over him like a wave moving in slow motion, feels his heart crumble like the wall of a sand castle, because-

none of them know how to detect and disable traps, none of them can safely open any of these _doors_ , because that was _sasha’s job_ -

_sasha with her choppy black hair that used to make hamid wince whenever he looked at it, but then he got to know her and one night, after- after, she snuck into his room and asked him to maybe, does the white part look... bad? i know you can do all that kinda, and she’d gestured vaguely in his direction, fancy stuff, you know? and he’d offered to style it for her if she wanted and after some thought she’d shaken her head but he’d_ understood _, and smiled and told her, honestly, that it fit her, and she’d smiled in that sharp, small sort of way that was always so uniquely_ her _, and climbed out of his window;_

 _and sasha and her coat full of daggers that, had he or zolf or anyone else worn it- not that they ever would, because that coat was_ sasha’s, _and if anyone but sasha was wearing it, well- but had they, it would’ve clinked and jangled made such a spectacle, but when sasha wore it she glided like a greased shadow along a water slide, or something;_

_sasha with her careful, guarded smiles and her awkward jokes and the gentleness she never fully mastered but she wouldn’t have been sasha if she’d been gentle, hamid thinks. sasha was sharp angles and pebbles thrown from rooftops and winking over a body that still had one of her daggers in its back, because the coast is clear now, guys, and then realizing she hadn’t actually winked, just blinked both her of eyes, and then spending the next thirty minutes trying stealthily to figure it out;_

_sasha, who disabled traps in the highest security bank in the world like they were infants’ toys and when they looked at her with awe, shrugged and said it was nothing, really, although, yeah, it_ was _pretty cool, wasn’t it?_

and zolf finds the trap and cel does their best and they keep muddling their way through but as they make their way through the darkened halls of shoin’s university, hamid is thinking, _sasha could have done this_. _sasha knew how to do this_. _sasha would tell a funny story about that one time she nearly didn’t catch a trap and got her finger cut off but because she’s that good, y’know, of course she found it. it’s basically nothing._

hamid watches zolf jump back from the door, cursing loudly, and thinks-

 _“you know, er, hamid, you’re not half bad at- at my sneaky shit, y’know? i bet you could have a knack for it- not like me of course, i’m_ pretty _stealthy, but, well, yeah?”_

_“oh- well thank you, sasha, it’s just that i’m a halfling, really-”_

_“no no, like, you’re real- real sneaky-like, yeah? same as me, ‘cept, you know, more_ magic stuff _and stuff. anyway, was just- an observation, y’know?”_

_“yeah- yeah. thank you, sasha.”_

hamid is alone in the echoing, cavernous room, and there is a body sitting so, so coldly still at the desk, and hamid is not thinking about a whistle-clean room underneath paris, or tinny voice of mr ceiling, but is thinking about sasha, moving like a whisper behind her enemies, peering over their shoulders while they’re none the wiser, and he puts the invisibility potion to his lips and moves forward. and forward. and forward. and does not drink.

hamid can feel the emptiness weighing on his shoulders that tells him he’s out of spells to cast or near enough to it, and zolf is looking haggard and cel’s shout of, “it was good knowing you buddies!” still so, painfully positive, even then, is ringing in his ears, and azu is staring up at the mr ceiling, _shoin,_ and the defiance on her face cracks something in his chest, and hamid knows, _knows_ that she’ll take that hit to protect them, protect him, and he drinks the invisibility potion and _moves_. 

(he stands next to azu and puts his still-invisible hand over hers and in the second before he opens his mouth and _breathes_ , azu knows she’s not alone and then not-shoin is dying, the melting metal is screaming and it isn’t over, not quite yet, but hamid is _there_ and shoin is _gone_ -)

after the fight, after shoin is taken care of and they’re safely, safer, above land, and cel has, after fussing after jasper and their village, and what potions to take with them, and how they’re going to miss their lab, and oh, what if they made a _pocket size_ lab? how would the physics of that even _work_...- of course i’m coming with you guys! _after_ ,

hamid gets a dagger. it’s a cheap one, mass produced, the sort you can find anywhere, if you try hard enough (the kind that still lined sasha’s coat, all the way to rome, even after the adamantine found its way to her, and two others carried fire and ice) and he practices with it. 

every day, he takes the dagger- just one. taking two feels- not right, not yet. he’s not sasha, can never be, sasha, but. but. hamid thinks about an invisibility potion on his lips, not-yet drunk. peering over the shoulders of a corpse. he slashes at the simple straw-stuffed dummy and slashes again and again and again-

hamid starts going to bed with aching arms, unused to the strain of angling a dagger _just so_ , and he sleeps deeper for the exercise and he practices even harder if only to keep the memories of that horrible, horrible moment in rome away-

_“azu, where are the others?”_

hamid isn’t sasha, but he practices with the dagger whenever he can and he scrounges up a book about traps and poisons and he reads until his eyes ache, and when that’s not enough, he searches out a member of Curie’s resistance who knows about these things, and watches them fight, and feels a pang in his heart. 

they aren’t sasha- they move differently, but it’s also so desperately _familiar_ and so when they gesture to him to start copying their movements, he does so with a deep determination. and when they gently correct his stance or walk him through a motion, hamid thinks about sasha, and ignores the aching of his arms.

hamid starts collecting daggers. he doesn’t even mean to do it, at first. it’s just- he watches zolf strip a corpse after they’ve mostly finished a job for wilde, and he can see the blade glinting in the sun, right on the edge of the ‘may be useful’ pile, and he doesn’t want to be caught unaware if he loses his, so he grabs it. it’s nothing special, just another generic dagger, although the shape is different than the one he has and it takes him a few days to get used to it. 

and then he takes another one, this time with wooden engravings on the handle, and he tucks it into his jacket and thinks, _just in case_ . and then another, one with a snaking blade, _just in case_. and then he’s rifling through a blood soaked jacket, only halfway paying attention to it, and he sees it. 

the dagger. it’s damascus adamantine, and curved wickedly, and hamid thinks of sasha and whispers, _oh_ , because he thinks he understands now, a little. why, every time- every time they had the chance, at least- after a fight, sasha would slowly, gently, clean and sharpen every one of her blades, why she was so protective of them, because they were _hers_. and these, this, this is _his_. 

he takes the adamantine dagger and its plain black sheath, and puts them on his belt. he knows the others have noticed, the way he doesn’t just use magic in a fight. how he keeps more to the shadows, how more often than not azu isn’t the only one with the blood of their enemies splattered down her front. 

(hamid is a lot less nauseous than he used to be.)

(the first time he sits next to azu after a fight and starts cleaning his daggers, she reaches into her bag for a cloth and begins wiping down her axe. she finishes before him, and then squeezes him tightly. _she would have loved this,_ she says. _you’re doing so well_. and hamid squeezes her tightly back and says, _i know,_ and _thank you, azu_. and they both cry, but it’s okay, because they have each other.)

  
  


the first time hamid creeps ahead and spots a spider silk-thin tripwire lying along the ground, and thinks, _oh that’s easy_ , he stops and stares at it in shock. and then he disables it, and creeps back to the group, and tells them, it’s safe, and tries not to smile too widely. 

and then zolf claps him on the shoulder and says, quietly, _she would have been proud, you know. and then gave you shit for doing it the long way_. 

and hamid grins widely and whispers back, _i know_ , and _thank you_ , and zolf smiles back.

  
  


cel watches their little buddy hamid start collecting knives and reading books on traps and drop into bed like an exhausted stone and thinks, _ah, the thrill of learning something new_ and they wonder what’s grabbed his attention.

and gradually, they learn about sasha, about grizzop. about the people their new friends lost along the way. it’s in bits and pieces, parts of stories and jokes you had to be there for that cel doesn’t fully understand, but they don’t mind that much. they ask some questions and stuff others to the back of their mind because they _can_ be sensitive, and the more they learn about sasha the more they watch hamid and think, _hmm_.

they watch hamid stealth along walls and then they watch where hamid used to be and probably is but frankly cel’s eyesight has never been that good and it’s obvious that hamid’s been improving, it’s all the potion fumes, and the goggles can only do so much but honestly the potions are worth it, and anyway, they watch hamid appear behind an enemy with two daggers sticking out of their back, and think, _ah_.

it’s been several months since hamid started, what to call it, multiclassing? yes, yes, cel should write that down, could be a useful measurement later, anyway, and they pull him aside and ask, _would you like me to show you some common alchemical traps?_ because they may not have much knowledge about other, rogue-y traps, but alchemy they can _do_.

and hamid smiles gratefully at them and says, _are you going to make them explode?_

and cel says, _well i can work around those restrictions_. 

and so hamid learns about acid traps and poison traps and how to recognize them and how to make them and some interesting ways to make them more efficient and, eventually, oops- _sorry hamid i will definitely come back to this tomorrow, i did not realize it was this late at night, wow time really flies when you’re having fun, ey_ \- how to disable them. 

(he also learns how _not_ to disable them, and how quickly acid can burn through your hand, and now azu insists on being there for their lessons, if you want to call them that, or hamid at least having a healing potion on hand, because, _hamid if you aren’t careful i’ll have to grow you a whole new hand!_

and there was also another incident which involved a _small_ explosion, but cel honestly hadn’t known those two agents would react that way when put together, and this is just _fascinating hamid, do you mind if i run some tests really quickly? oh you could even help, you’re so dexterous, you know you really do need dexterity to be an alchemist, some things can be so fidgety, you know, in fact, did i ever tell you how i lost this ear, it’s really interesting actually, so it all started when jasper had this idea, right-_ )

**Author's Note:**

> this is what i picture the adamantine dagger he finds looks like: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.catawiki.nl%2Fassets%2F2018%2F6%2F25%2Fd%2F4%2F6%2Fd46fe6d1-0b56-46f7-8fc8-f9095870e722.jpg&f=1&nofb=1


End file.
